---
title: Where the European Structural and Investment Funds go?
date: 2023-06-08
authors: ['Anuar Ustayev']
---

European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) is a financial instrument used by the European Union (EU) to support regional development and economic cohesion among its member states. The ESIF combines several funds to provide financial assistance to regions and cities in the EU with the aim of reducing economic disparities and promoting sustainable growth.

In this data story, our objective is to determine which country benefits the most from the ESIF funds and identify the region within the EU that receives the highest amount of funding.

To begin our analysis, we are using data on the allocation of ESIF funds across EU member states and their respective regions. These datasets are provided by previous work at OpenSpending project. See available datasets:

- Full dataset: https://www.openspending.org/@os-data/complete-european-esif-funds-beneficiaries-2007-2020
- By country, e.g., this is for Austria: https://www.openspending.org/@os-data/complete-european-esif-funds-beneficiaries-2007-2020-filtered-by-at

The data provide insights into the financial assistance provided by the European Union to support regional development and economic cohesion:

<FlatUiTable url="https://storage.openspending.org/complete-european-esif-funds-beneficiaries-2007-2020/eu-esif-funds-beneficiaries-2007-2020-full.csv" />

After processing the available datasets we have derived an aggregated data resource that groups data by country which enables us to understand where the most funding went between 2007 and 2020. Notice that maximum amounts in each column are highlighted in the table but they might be in local currencies so check the 'currency' field:

<FlatUiTable url="https://storage.openspending.org/eu-esif-funds-beneficiaries-2007-2020-full-aggregated-by-country.csv" />

Quick observations:

- The Czech Republic has the EU cofinancing amount of CZK 2,731,165,279,234 which is approximately EUR 115 billions.
- Poland has the EU cofinancing amount of PLN 302,958,765,476 which is approximately EUR 67 billions.
- Other countries that use local currencies do not have significant amounts when comparing to above two nations.

So let's convert all currencies to ~EUR but only include 'eu_cofinancing_amount' values as we will use it for comparison:

<FlatUiTable url="https://storage.openspending.org/eu-esif-funds-beneficiaries-2007-2020--country-code-confinancing-amount.csv" />

With this data table we can easily see top countries by funding. Note that you can use the table component above to sort values by values in 'eu_cofinancing_amount' column which helps you to quickly see top countries. Let's build a quick visualization to make it even more obvious:

<Vega
  data={{
    table: [
      {
        x: "LU",
        y: 30852529.89
      },
      {
        x: "DK",
        y: 492017672
      },
      {
        x: "BE",
        y: 858388537.42
      },
      {
        x: "DE",
        y: 912803359.21
      },
      {
        x: "FI",
        y: 2858282488
      },
      {
        x: "SI",
        y: 4576151396.24
      },
      {
        x: "EE",
        y: 5419641772
      },
      {
        x: "LT",
        y: 6750675528.74
      },
      {
        x: "SK",
        y: 12295960193.92
      },
      {
        x: "UK",
        y: 12829255012.1
      },
      {
        x: "FR",
        y: 15027864492.94
      },
      {
        x: "RO",
        y: 19970864938.12
      },
      {
        x: "PT",
        y: 23800568868.02
      },
      {
        x: "IT",
        y: 34860253672.98
      },
      {
        x: "PL",
        y: 67537688711
      },
      {
        x: "CZ",
        y: 115591108113
      }
    ]
  }}
  spec={{
    $schema: 'https://vega.github.io/schema/vega-lite/v4.json',
    data: {
      name: 'table'
    },
    encoding: {
      x: {
        field: 'x',
        type: 'ordinal'
      },
      y: {
        field: 'y',
        type: 'quantitative'
      }
    },
    mark: 'bar'
  }}
/>

Based on the bar chart above we can conclude that the following 3 countries have received the most amounts from ESIF fund:

1. Czech Republic - EUR ~116b.
2. Poland - EUR ~68b.
3. Italy - EUR ~35b.

_This data story was created by using Datopian's PortalJS framework. You can learn more about the framework by visiting https://portaljs.com/_
